but theres nowhere to hide from these bones, from my mind
by wendlas
Summary: "He'd gone home, tried to carry on, tried to write, tried to sleep, but had found himself lying awake, staring at the ceiling, transfixed by how dull it was compared to the compared to the night sky, and wondering why the world had decided to spare him, and why it couldn't have done the same thing for Moritz and Wendla." ritz/melchi/wendla


Work Text:

The ghosts followed him everywhere.

Except he didn't know if he should call them ghosts, or spirits, or angels— he didn't actually _believe_ in any of those things in the first place and the words felt much too clumsy on his tongue, and this all made him feel wrong, as if for the first time since he was just a mere infant, Melchior Gabor was potentially _scared_ that he didn't know _enough_. Two emotions, both so foreign, both so gentle, both so unlike him.

(Both so intertwined with the boy with the horrible Latin and the sad smile, not _him,_ not _Melchior,_ not when fear and insecurity belonged to another person entirely.)

He'd always considered himself sharp. Mentally, emotionally. Quick-witted and well-read, impulsive but detached. Consequences wouldn't touch him, he refused to let them. And now all the shit he'd pulled was finally, _finally_ catching up to him. He'd been a fool. He'd been a fool and he'd gotten Wendla pregnant and thanks to him she was dead now. He'd been a fool and he hadn't payed attention to the layers of sadness covering Moritz's soul, and maybe if he _had,_ he could have done something, could have saved him.

But he hadn't and now they were both dead.

And even then, they refused to leave him alone.

That night in the cemetery, crying over her grave, taking out that razor, his mind stuffy and his hands shaking, they'd stopped him. Wendla and Moritz. The dead girl he'd ruined and the dead boy he'd loved. Or maybe he'd loved both of them. Or maybe he'd loved neither.

Hell, he didn't even know anymore.

Back then, he had managed to convince himself that the images of his late friends were mirages, a cheap trick from a part of his brain that must have known clarity, a quick save to stop him from ending his life. He'd gone home, tried to carry on, tried to write, tried to sleep, but had found himself lying awake, staring at the ceiling, transfixed by how dull it was compared to the night sky, and wondering why the world had decided to spare him, and why it couldn't have done the same thing for Moritz and Wendla.

Melchior didn't believe in fate. He didn't believe that he was important in the grand scheme of things— that _any_ of them were, actually, because what were kids to a fictional God? What were ants to the humans that stomped on them? What were mites to the wind that blew them away?— which meant that he couldn't fool himself into believing that something had made it seem as if the two were there _just_ to save his life.

But he didn't believe in ghosts, either.

He'd have to choose an explanation, in the end. And choosing meant accepting. And accepting meant moving on. And moving on meant forgetting.

Melchior didn't know if he wanted to forget, just yet. If he wanted to let go of the past, when the future could be so theoretically painful. As long as that grim denial burned in his core, then he would be able to speculate as to what exactly took place on the night he and his life alike had been irreversibly changed.

Maybe his own illusions hadn't saved him. Maybe it was something else. God? No. Maybe.

There was, of course, the possibility that, yes, the mirages at the cemetery weren't mirages at all. He couldn't quite move past the fact that two people that he had held so dear to him were so far from him now, but maybe he didn't _have_ to. Dead, sure. But gone? Could Wendla and Moritz _really_ be gone? Death couldn't possibly be the final frontier, not when the human race was constantly growing and changing and shifting and evolving, so who's to say that those two didn't find a way to cheat the system? Who's to say that he'll never see Wendla's kind, forgiving smile, or Moritz's sleepy dark eyes ever again, when he so clearly saw them the night before?

Maybe he never _would_ have to let them go.

Maybe he was just going mad.

Either way, his speculations were all he had left now, and to let himself drift off into oblivion would only make things worse, would only be the last nail in the theoretical coffin.

(How lucky he must be, for his coffin to be theoretical. Wendla and Moritz, they didn't have the same advantage.)

Melchior sat up, his eyes drifting from his bed covers to his desk, to his bookcase, to every nook and cranny that he had carved inside of this room, looking for a glint of something that he wasn't quite sure he even wanted to find. Maybe if he saw them just one more time, he wouldn't need to, ever again.

(He was smarter than that though. Ultimately, it wasn't up to him.)

He found nothing. Nothing that he was looking for, at least. That was fine. He didn't expect for the ghosts of his past to watch over him as he slept. Granted, he didn't expect for the ghosts of his past to do anything, actually, so it was worth a try.

And there was that word again. Ghost. Spirit. Phantom. An apparition of a person or persons, usually of the dead variety. Was that all that he could reduce Wendla and Moritz to, now? How could they be ghosts, mere nebulous images, when they had been so much _more_ before he had screwed them both over. It was unrealistic! Not because of the supernatural aspect of the situation, because if Melchior really wanted to get through this, he had to open his mind to all kinds of wild beliefs.

No, it was unrealistic because he couldn't picture Wendla Bergmann, the girl with the brightest smile and the glistening eyes and the soft hands and the gentle manner, as a _ghost._ As somebody _un_ living.

And, yes, maybe Moritz had always had something inside of him that was broken, maybe Moritz had never been as bright as Wendla, or as happy, but he was just as _living,_ just as _important_ to Melchior, and he deserved just as much as an opportunity to laugh, even if the laugh was never quite as wholesome as any of them wanted it to be.

But Moritz had taken his life. Wendla's life had been taken.

Both precarious tragedies, both a tale of caution to the little ones who would eventually grow to fit the mold that the adults would force them into.

That, _that_ was the most sickening factor in all of this; they'd all mourn for a couple of months, everybody would be as respectable as was possible, until eventually some mind-numbing grown up would pass by one of those graves and whisper to their child something along the lines of "that's what happens when you don't behave as you should."

Wendla's epic would be one of what a child was in danger of, should they rebel against the norms of their times. Moritz, meanwhile, would be used as a source of motivation for those who were struggling in schools— all those kids, the ones who had to work just a little harder to pay attention in math or in latin, the ones who were led by curiosity instead of a sense of what was supposedly right or wrong, the ones who would go through life feeling _nothing_ and doing _anything_ to change that: those were the kids that were damned, those were the kids that would be subject to these stories, as if they were fairy tales, as if a girl being forced into an abortion was somehow a _lesson,_ as if a boy losing the last bit of hope he had in the world was something _frowned upon_.

It's why these things would keep happening. The adults thought they were helping them by _warning_ them not to do these things, except they didn't even _tell_ them the things they shouldn't be _doing,_ and it was _infuriating_ that others' struggles were being used as a point of reference when, in the end, it _wasn't their fault._

(If you took it to a more shallow level, Melchior himself was the one to blame. And maybe that was the part that stung the most.)

He remembered telling his mother about Moritz's death. How her façade of a distant authority figure had collapsed instantly. How she had gone from being the Frau Gabor she was in front of his father, to being Fanny, to being his _mom_ , the only person in this world that he had _left._ She had been devastated. Moritz had been like a second son to her, had been more than important to her.

 _(God,_ Moritz had been such a vital constant to so many people and Melchior can't help but wonder how different their story might have turned out if only he had known as much.)

It was different with Wendla's death. Less tender. More calculating. _Anemia,_ he had told her. _She died of anemia._

Melchior hadn't missed the twitch of her eyebrows, or the narrowing of her eyes. How she had let her face express grief, but kept her eyes impassive. She had known about Wendla's pregnancy, _of course she had known,_ and his mother was clever, after all. It wouldn't cost her much to realize that Frau Bergmann's teary-eyed explanation for her daughter's death was a cover up.

No, his mother had probably figured out what Wendla had _really_ died of. What her own mother had forced her to do. Had Wendla wanted an abortion? He didn't think she even knew what an abortion was, and her mother probably hadn't bothered to explain either. But why would Frau Bergmann make such a harsh decision?

Melchior knew it was a question of status in the town, of not being shamed, the _same damn word_ that had fucked over his best friend's father and led Moritz to his suicide.

(Memories of his hand flying across a mostly blank page, the sun blocked by the drapery, the prospect of seeing Moritz and aiding him with his problems merely making him write faster and faster, just one more journal entry, another nitpick of society— _the question is: shame._

That day was so distant, so far, so much more unattainable than a memory should ever be.)

He leaned towards the table facing his bed and switched on the lamp, the dim light casting a hazy and somewhat ominous glow over his room. A shiver ran through his back and he could feel the goosebumps forming on his arms and legs. He was completely alone.

Or, rather, so it seemed.

Melchior slowly set his head back on the pillow, incapable of telling himself to turn the light back off. Just in case. He'd keep it on, just in case. All was fair when you were testing a hypothesis, and that's exactly what this was. An experiment, of sorts. A game.

(Play with matches; get yourself burned.)

Except Melchior didn't have a fully formed hypothesis just yet. Or maybe he did and he was just scared of saying it out loud and acknowledging it, just because it would make it all that more real.

No, he couldn't. Not yet. His heart yelled _love_ and _pain_ and _listen_ but Melchior couldn't. Didn't want to, maybe. His brain was throwing _science_ and _logic_ at him and that was the road that had been most kind to him, so that was the road that he was gonna take.

Last time he listened to his heart, a girl had wound up dead, and he wasn't going back to that place.

He pushed that familiar feeling of uneasiness to the back of his mind, ignored the chills running down his spine, and the guilt churning in his stomach, and let his eyes droop closed, allowing himself to fall into a fitful sleep.

(Melchior didn't see the fuzzy outlines of a girl and a boy sitting on his bed, watching him intently. Melchior didn't see their somber twin smiles, their shared look, or their clasped hands. Melchior didn't see the way the girl had a palm placed over her heart, how she was biting her lip sadly. Melchior didn't see the way the boy looked at him quietly, longingly, his fingernails digging into the comforter, his dark eyes never once leaving him.

Melchior didn't see Wendla and Moritz, but Wendla and Moritz saw Melchior.

 _Those you've known, and lost still walk behind you.)_


End file.
